Watership Down (32 page)

       
"Don't stay there, then," said Hazel. "Follow me close and run when I do." Without waiting to look out through the hinge, he went round the half-open door of the shed and stopped on the threshold.

       
The cat, a tabby with white chest and paws, was at the further end of the little yard, walking slowly and deliberately along the side of a pile of logs. When Hazel appeared in the doorway it saw him at once and stood stock still, with staring eyes and twitching tail. Hazel hopped slowly across the threshold and stopped again. Already sunlight was slanting across the yard, and in the stillness the flies buzzed about a patch of dung a few feet away. There was a smell of straw and dust and hawthorn.

       
"You look hungry," said Hazel to the cat. "Rats getting too clever, I suppose?"

       
The cat made no reply. Hazel sat blinking in the sunshine. The cat crouched almost flat on the ground, thrusting its head forward between its front paws. Close behind, Pipkin fidgeted and Hazel, never taking his eyes from the cat, could sense that he was trembling.

       
"Don't be frightened, Hlao-roo," he whispered, "I'll get you away, but you must wait till it comes for us. Keep still."

       
The cat began to lash its tail. Its hindquarters lifted and wagged from side to side in mounting excitement.

       
"Can you run?" said Hazel. "I think not. Why, you pop-eyed, back-door saucer-scraper--"

       
The cat flung itself across the yard and the two rabbits leaped into flight with great thrusts of their hind legs. The cat came very fast indeed and although both of them had been braced ready to move on the instant, they were barely out of the yard in time. Racing up the side of the long barn, they heard the Labrador barking in excitement as it ran to the full extent of its rope. A man's voice shouted to it. From the cover of the hedge beside the lane they turned and looked back. The cat had stopped short and was licking one paw with a pretense of nonchalance.

       
"They hate to look silly," said Hazel. "It won't give us any more trouble. If it hadn't charged at us like that, it would have followed us much further and probably called up another as well. And somehow you can't make a dash unless they do it first. It's a good thing you saw it coming, Hlao-roo."

       
"I'm glad if I helped, Hazel. But what were we up to, and why did you talk to the rabbits in the box?"

       
"I'll tell you all about it later on. Let's go into the field now and feed; then we can make our way home as slowly as you like."

25.
   
The Raid

He went consenting, or else he was no king. ... It was no one's place to say to him, "It is time to make the offering."

Mary Renault,
The King Must Die

As things turned out, Hazel and Pipkin did not come back to the Honeycomb until the evening. They were still feeding in the field when it came on to rain, with a cold wind, and they took shelter first in the nearby ditch and then--since the ditch was on a slope and had a fair flow of rainwater in about ten minutes--among some sheds halfway down the lane. They burrowed into a thick pile of straw and for some time remained listening for rats. But all was quiet and they grew drowsy and fell asleep, while outside the rain settled in for the morning. When they woke it was mid-afternoon and still drizzling. It seemed to Hazel that there was no particular hurry. The going would be troublesome in the wet, and anyway no self-respecting rabbit could leave without a forage round the sheds. A pile of mangels and swedes occupied them for some time and they set out only when the light was beginning to fade. They took their time and reached the hanger a little before dark, with nothing worse to trouble them than the discomfort of soaking-wet fur. Only two or three of the rabbits were out to a rather subdued silflay in the wet. No one remarked on their absence and Hazel went underground at once, telling Pipkin to say nothing about their adventure for the time being. He found his burrow empty, lay down and fell asleep.

       
Waking, he found Fiver beside him as usual. It was some time before dawn. The earth floor felt pleasantly dry and snug and he was about to go back to sleep when Fiver spoke.

       
"You've been wet through, Hazel."

       
"Well, what about it? The grass is wet, you know."

       
"You didn't get so wet on silflay. You were soaked. You weren't here at all yesterday, were you?"

       
"Oh, I went foraging down the hill."

       
"Eating swedes: and your feet smell of farmyard--hens' droppings and bran. But there's some other funny thing besides--something I
can't
smell. What happened?"

       
"Well, I had a bit of a brush with a cat, but why worry?"

       
"Because you're concealing something, Hazel. Something dangerous."

       
"It's Holly that's in danger, not I. Why bother about me?"

       
"Holly?" replied Fiver in surprise. "But Holly and the others reached the big warren early yesterday evening. Kehaar told us. Do you mean to say you didn't know?"

       
Hazel felt fairly caught out. "Well, I know now," he replied. "I'm glad to hear it."

       
"So it comes to this," said Fiver. "You went to a farm yesterday and escaped from a cat. And whatever you were up to, it was so much on your mind that you forgot to ask about Holly last night."

       
"Well, all right, Fiver--I'll tell you all about it. I took Pipkin and went to that farm that Kehaar told us about where there are rabbits in a hutch. I found the rabbits and talked to them and I've taken a notion to go back one night and get them out, to come and join us here."

       
"What for?"

       
"Well, two of them are does, that's what for."

       
"But if Holly's successful we shall soon have plenty of does: and from all I've ever heard of hutch rabbits, they don't take easily to wild life. The truth is, you're just a silly show-off."

       
"A silly show-off?" said Hazel. "Well, we'll just see whether Bigwig and Blackberry think so."

       
"Risking your life and other rabbits' lives for something that's of little or no value to us," said Fiver. "Oh, yes, of course the others will go with you. You're their Chief Rabbit. You're supposed to decide what's sensible and they trust you. Persuading them will prove nothing, but three or four dead rabbits will prove you're a fool, when it's too late."

       
"Oh, be quiet," answered Hazel. "I'm going to sleep."

       
During silflay next morning, with Pipkin for a respectful chorus, he told the others about his visit to the farm. As he had expected, Bigwig jumped at the idea of a raid to free the hutch rabbits.

       
"It can't go wrong," he said. "It's a splendid idea, Hazel! I don't know how you open a hutch, but Blackberry will see to that. What annoys me is to think you ran from that cat. A good rabbit's a match for a cat, any day. My mother went for one once and she fairly gave it something to remember, I can tell you: scratched its fur out like willow herb in autumn! Just leave the farm cats to me and one or two of the others!"

       
Blackberry took a little more convincing: but he, like Bigwig and Hazel himself, was secretly disappointed not to

have gone on the expedition with Holly: and when the other two pointed out that they were relying on him to tell them how to get the hutch open, he agreed to come.

       
"Do we need to take everyone?" he asked. "You say the dog's tied up and I suppose there can't be more than three cats. Too many rabbits will only be a nuisance in the dark: someone will get lost and we shall have to spend time looking for him."

       
"Well, Dandelion, Speedwell and Hawkbit, then," said Bigwig, "and leave the others behind. Do you mean to go tonight, Hazel-rah?"

       
"Yes, the sooner the better," said Hazel. "Get hold of those three and tell them. Pity it's going to be dark--we could have taken Kehaar: he'd have enjoyed it."

       
However, their hopes for that night were disappointed, for the rain returned before dusk, settling in on a northwest wind and carrying up the hill the sweet-sour smell of flowering privet from cottage hedges below. Hazel sat on the bank until the light had quite faded. At last, when it was clear that the rain was going to stay for the night, he joined the others in the Honeycomb. They had persuaded Kehaar to come down out of the wind and wet, and one of Dandelion's tales of El-ahrairah was followed by an extraordinary story that left everyone mystified but fascinated, about a time when Frith had to go away on a journey, leaving the whole world to be covered with rain. But a man built a great floating hutch that held all the animals and birds until Frith returned and let them out.

       
"It won't happen tonight, will it, Hazel-rah?" asked Pipkin, listening to the rain in the beech leaves outside. "There's no hutch here."

       
"Kehaar'll fly you up to the moon, Hlao-roo," said Bluebell, "and you can come down on Bigwig's head like a birch branch in the frost. But there's time to go to sleep first."

       
Before Fiver slept, however, he talked again to Hazel about the raid.

       
"I suppose it's no good asking you not to go?" he said.

       
"Look here," answered Hazel, "have you got one of your bad turns about the farm? If you have, why not say so straight out? Then we'd all know where we were."

       
"I've no feelings about the farm one way or the other," said Fiver. "But that doesn't necessarily mean it's all right. The feelings come when they will--they don't always come. Not for the lendri, not for the crow. If it comes to that, I've no idea what's happening to Holly and the others. It might be good or bad. But there's something that frightens me about you yourself, Hazel: just you, not any of the others. You're all alone, sharp and clear, like a dead branch against the sky."

       
"Well, if you mean you can see trouble for me and not for any of the others, tell them and I'll leave it to them to decide whether I ought to keep out of it. But that's giving up a lot, Fiver, you know. Even with your word for it, someone's bound to think I'm afraid."

       
"Well, I say it's not worth the risk, Hazel. Why not wait for Holly to come back? That's all we have to do."

       
"I'll be snared if I wait for Holly. Can't you see that the very thing I want is to have these does here when he comes back? But look, Fiver, I'll tell you what. I've come to trust you so much that I'll take the greatest care. In fact, I won't even go into the farmyard myself. I'll stay outside, at the top of the lane: and if that's not meeting your fears halfway, then I don't know what is."

       
Fiver said no more and Hazel turned his thoughts to the raid and the difficulty he foresaw of getting the hutch rabbits to go the distance back to the warren.

       
The next day was bright and dry, with a fresh wind that cleared up what remained of the wet. The clouds came racing over the ridge from the south as they had on the May evening when Hazel first climbed the down. But now they were higher and smaller, settling at last into a mackerel sky like a beach at low tide. Hazel took Bigwig and Blackberry to the edge of the escarpment, whence they could look across to Nuthanger on its little hill. He described the approach and went on to explain how the rabbit hutch was to be found. Bigwig was in high spirits. The wind and the prospect of action excited him and he spent some time with Dandelion, Hawkbit and Speedwell, pretending to be a cat and encouraging them to attack him as realistically as they could. Hazel, whose talk with Fiver had somewhat clouded him,
 
recovered as he watched them tussling over the grass and ended by joining in himself, first as an attacker and then as the cat, staring and quivering for all the world like the Nuthanger tabby.

       
"I shall be disappointed if we don't meet a cat after all this," said Dandelion, as he waited for his turn to run at a fallen beech branch from one side, claw it twice and dash out again. "I feel a really dangerous animal."
   

       
"You vatch heem, Meester Dando," said Kehaar, who was hunting for snails in the grass nearby, "Meester Pigvig, 'e vant you t'ink all vun peeg yoke; make you prave. Cat 'e no yoke. You no see 'im, you no 'ear 'im. Den yomp! 'E come."

       
"But we're not going there to eat, Kehaar," said Bigwig. "That makes all the difference. We shan't stop watching for cats the whole time."

       
"Why not eat the cat?" said Bluebell. "Or bring one back here for breeding? That ought to improve the warren stock no end."